Internet ‘Concessions’ Coming to China? Don’t Hold Your Breath

Amid all the murkiness around the Shanghai free-trade zone, one area has drawn special interest: talk that the Internet will be freer there, with unblocked access to Facebook and Twitter.

The confusion began with a Tuesday piece in the South China Morning Post that said the Internet would be unblocked in the Shanghai trade zone. That was followed by a Wednesday piece on the website of the party mouthpiece People’s Daily rebuffing the content of the SCMP article. Things got even murkier when the article disappeared from the People’s Daily site on Thursday and a new Reuters report emerged saying that another special economic zone in Shenzhen would have unfettered access to the Internet.

On Friday, Wang Jinhai, the spokesman for the Qianhai Economic Zone in Shenzhen who was cited in the Reuters report, shed a bit of light on what might be going on.